Memory Motel

Today is big with the anniversary-ness. On the evening of this day, 32 years ago -- Thanksgiving evening 1980, I boarded a Trailways bus in Indiana, Pennsylvania, headed for Boston and my next, new, fab adventure.

I was at my parent’s home for rucksack repacking and the traditional turkey feast before my northward journey.

College graduation had been the previous Spring. (I'd matriculated with an oh-so-useful degree in fine art, with a music minor. Thus preparing for one of those readily available, high paying gigs painting nekkid folk while listening to Liszt and Orff.) My final season on the road with the carnival was history, (topped off with my ignominious booting from the great state of Texas).  There were just a few last parties on campus to clock in at.

I went to university where my father taught, in the same town where I went to high school. My dream, my big fat, glorious, pie-in-the-sky, castle-in-the-air was to go away to school -- preferably Boston University or somewhere, anywhere in the San Francisco area. It was not to be though. My distinct dearth of dineros, combined with free tuition for professor’s kiddles, meant the choice was made for me. IUP's not a bad school at all -- just wasn't my fantasy.

In any case, I managed to find a drunken debauch or three and, what I thought would be, a farewell to western Pennsylvania fling. In post-sheet shaking kibbitz with my flingee, Sam, it somehow came up that my father was a math professor. 'What's your last name,' he asked. What a surprise -- he’d just thumped thighs WITH HIS ADVISOR’S DAUGHTER.

He was thrilled. I was a squicked out. He wanted to come over to the house and say hi to Pop. I was having none of that. Please, dude -- I don’t take my una botta e via’s home to meet the folks!

Mega sigh.

All the same, he managed to invite himself along to my bus station farewell on Thanksgiving evening. There we were in the dimly lit, grimy parking lot -- my little sister Ann, my father, mother and Sam, who was hovering at my side. I hugged mia famiglia goodbye and went to board. Arm proprietorially, snugly around me Sam escorted me to the coach door and then, dramatically, bent me over backwards for a big, wet, sloppy tonsillectomy.

Christ on a Cosmo, what a performance.

With stratospheric embarrassment, cheeks blooming 53 zillion shades of crimson, I stepped aboard and away into the future.